Attacks On FAA Capacity Before The Crash
We won’t know the full scope of what went wrong to cause the horrific in-air crash at DCA until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completes its investigation. That could take up to two years. Oh, and that’s assuming the investigation is independent–which didn’t previously need to be specified, but, well… look around.
Given all of that, the opposition to Musk and Trump, including but not limited to Democrats, must not wait to assign blame.
Trump sent resignation offers to air traffic controllers* the day before the crash. Trump initiated a sweeping hiring freeze across the government while air traffic control towers were significantly understaffed. Elon Musk pushed out the head of the FAA, leaving the agency without leadership at the time of the accident. Within this context, a supervisor at the Musk-Trump FAA decided to reduce staffing levels at DCA earlier that fateful evening. And of course the Defense Department that flew the helicopter that day was serving under Commander in Chief Donald Trump and his officials.
Trump’s Disaster Response
These facts, along with Trump’s racist, callous, and irresponsible response in the immediate wake of the crash, need to be treated like the massive scandal that it is.
On The Daily Blast podcast from The New Republic, Greg Sargent and guest Juliette Kayyem outlined Trump’s truly abhorrent reaction to the crash. Among his most flagrant comments were:
- Blaming “DEI” in a rant with the transparently racist implication that nonwhite people are not mentally or physically fit to be air traffic controllers
- When asked about assigning blame before he even knew the names of people killed, he responded: “[…] You mean the names of the people that are on the plane. You think that’s going to make a difference? They are a group of people that have lost their lives.”
- When pressed on the fact that FAA diversity policies began in 2013 and remained the same throughout his first administration, Trump doubled down on his lie saying, “I did change it. I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy. And then Biden came in and he changed it.
As I previously pointed out, Trump also claimed on Truth Social that the air traffic controller should have directed the helicopter pilot where to fly to avoid the plane. But the audio recording from the tower shows the controller did in fact tell the pilot to pass behind the plane.
Make It A Scandal
It is glaring obvious that Trump and his administration are incompetent at both preventing disasters and responding to them in a responsible way to preempt future catastrophes. Furthermore, Trump’s comments indicate a disregard for the human lives lost, caring more about deflecting scrutiny from his own culpability. Democrats need to make these points clear to the American people. As our Executive Director Jeff Hauser put it, “Attacking Trump and Musk after the crash […] was not only okay, it was the responsibility of civil society.”
* Of course, there is a history of new Republican presidents attacking air traffic controllers in their first year of office (consider Ronald Reagan)
Image Credit: “DCA Control Tower & Terminal C DCA 07 2010 9841” by Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.